http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100824/NEWS/308249990/border-patrol-move-almost-a-certainty-no-special-permits-needed

It turns out Port Angeles is not the only northern border station looking to expand:

http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20100328/NEWS02/303269866

Erie station- similar to Port Angeles in that it is separated from Canada by water.

Note: reports of the expansion at Erie include numbers of arrests out of that station:

“The Border Patrol operations in Erie, nearly six years old, include more than 30 agents who apprehended 588 illegal immigrants in fiscal year 2008-09.”

“The Border Patrol’s apprehensions in the Erie area have grown steadily, from 332 in fiscal 2006-2007 to 588 in 2008-09 to 305 so far in 2009-10.

Of those apprehended so far this fiscal year, 136 were individuals found by other law enforcement agencies and turned over to the Border Patrol.”

http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20100824/NEWS/308249990/border-patrol-move-almost-a-certainty-no-special-permits-needed

Border Patrol spokeswoman Jenny Burke said Monday that
The number of arrests for Port Angeles’ or any other station is “law enforcement-sensitive.”

The public should be informed Re: this type of “law enforcement-sensitive” info:

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/local/08192010_2.xml

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/national/08232010_2.xml

http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/archives/april_2010/04302010_6.xml

http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/newsroom/news_releases/archives/2006_news_releases/112006/11212006_2.xml

If the US Border Patrol has any justification for creating a permanent, 50 agent station,
why wouldn’t they make that information available to the public?

Maybe because the N. Olympic Peninsula is really a sleepy backwater, not actually sharing a border with Canada.

Maybe because there is no justification for 25-50 agents here.

Maybe because the number of arrests locally, come nowhere close to justifying 25-50 agents.

Maybe because the number of arrests locally come nowhere close to justifying a threat Re: the US/Canada border that requires 25-50 agents in Port Angeles.

Anybody ever wonder- if the checkpoints stopped in 2008- what do all those agents do these days?

What we do not know:

How many US Border Patrol arrests have been made out of the Port Angeles station in the past 12 months?

What percentage of US Border Patrol arrests out of the Port Angeles station are connected in any way to the US/Canada border?

Answers to these questions will not be found in local papers or on the USBP Port Angeles Station web page.

A local school or fire district wants to expand facilities via a levy- plenty of info on their web pages and in local papers Re: justification for funding. Local agencies- accountable to local voters.

Federal government out to expand local facilities- no info Re: justification for funding on their web page- no hard hitting questions from local reporters.

http://tinyurl.com/DontAskDontTellUSBP

Good job border patrol – KEEP IT UP. The majority are firmly behind you.

The government does not have rights- people do.

Government has powers granted by the people.

I disagree! What about the ILLEGAL POLICE and ILLEGAL BORDER PATROL AGENTS and all those ILLEGAL AMERICAN CITIZENS who don’t have health care and haven’t purchased private “health” insurance?!

The implications are that Untied States citizens are incapable of and/or unwilling to harvest [“our own”] produce; that we Americans need darker-skinned servants from other countries to work for us so that we can consume. I strongly suspect that the person who I heard ask this question would vehemently deny any such implications if confronted with my awareness about this, and would claim to have been advocating for the human right of immigrants to do work that Americans don’t want to do anyway; and this denial would help to make my point.

The self-designated immigrant rights activist went on to praise some farmer-employer who “owned the whole town” and “helped and really cared about the [Mexican] migrant workers”. This is clear-as-crystal classist (and paternalistic) ideology; the belief that the ownership was deserved and that the owner gave and the workers received. This same “immigrant rights activist” scoffed when I pointed out the international (neoliberal) economic system that motivated the immigrants to migrate for work to begin with.

I don’t personally know the particular employer indicated. Perhaps that owner offered better than usual wages and working conditions and provided somewhat of a buffer for the migrant workers against unjust intrusions by “authorities”. However, even in that case, the owner was still the beneficiary of the workers’ labor; the pickers were the producers (or the providers of the service) and the owner-employer took (or received) profits.

Are American citizens incapable of and/or unwilling to provide the services performed by immigrants from Mexico, “Latin America”, Asia, and other places where most of the people are not white? Are Americans of any color “too good” to “pick our fruit”? Do some individuals deserve to collect and accumulate the fruits of the labors of other persons who work long and hard in difficult and/or dangerous conditions for mere subsistence, if even that much compensation? My answer to these questions is a big, resounding “NO!”

The idea of “work” has taken on a negative connotation in American and global culture. Simple, honest, necessary, meaningful work is often viewed as undesirable and individuals who do this work are considered to be lacking in intelligence and/or industriousness and basically as “less-than” and therefore not worthy of even merely sufficient compensation. Meanwhile, the few who have accumulated extreme excess (the profiteers) from the labor of others are erroneously portrayed as the “producers” of the wealth and they are given public adulation and inordinate power in addition to the wealth (that they have, in real reality, stolen from the workers). So, not only are the workers economically injured by the profiteers’ theft of a large portion of the fruits of their labors, but insult is added to this injury by society with its overall view that these humans are less worthy than those who lord the stolen wealth and power over them.

United States citizens have been less willing to accept long hours and poor working conditions for little compensation because they have not been in a predicament that compels them to be so accepting, as workers from other nations often are. As “the chickens come home to roost” and wage-slavery becomes more pronounced and widespread for US citizens, as the employer-over-employee power-differential becomes more severe, ANY work begins to look more appealing to Americans. At this point, to distract attention from their own legalized thievery, the profiteers point unjustly (and usually semi-covertly, with propaganda and their media and astroturf programming) to the migrant workers as the cause of the economic hardship of the citizens-from-birth. Unfortunately, so many Americans fall for this transparent, divide-and-conquer maneuver and the energy that they could have used as part of a mass movement to create economic justice domestically and globally, they drain away on unjustified blame for their working-class neighbors. The work is work no matter who is doing it and there is no good reason why all humans should not be decently, humanely compensated for working as producers of goods and services.

Like humans worldwide, though some US citizens need caregivers, Americans as a people do not need servants from other countries; and Mexican “fruit-pickers” and workers from any other nations should not have to produce their fingers to the bone for crumbs any more than American individuals should. The wealth produced by human labor and ingenuity should be used with humanitarian ethics, in support of human rights and for the good of the whole of humanity.

I wanted to compose an e-mail Re: 2 short videos I made and get it out to you:

The US Border Patrol stopped doing checkpoints locally in 2008.

It looks like they have not moved on to matters of National Security.

Their web page still states:

“Apart from ongoing line-watch operations, duties in Port Angeles have recently extended to include limited Traffic Checkpoint and Boat Patrol operations.”

Local “news” papers provide very little info on local US Border Patrol activities.

Recent history- Port Angeles, WA- US Border Patrol has responded to

a construction site theft

a coffee stand robbery

an escaped drunk running through the woods

a trailer park domestic dispute in the Port Angeles area

and a bank robbery

- why?

I put together a couple of short videos- trying to look into this.

Links to all above incidents included in both videos.

Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uVseyI0cP8

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riKvblzh-X0

Alex

After introducing himself by a name that was oddly the same as that of one group member who wasn’t present, the guy went on to tell a story about his wife being a Hispanic Border Patrol agent and how they had recently moved to our area from the southwestern most community in the continental US, where they had, according to him, drunken Mexican illegal immigrants tearing through his yard at all hours of the day and night. He carried on about how the US belongs to its citizens and how we have a Constitution and that immigrants steal Americans identities (use fake IDs and American citizens’ social security numbers) and that “illegal” immigrants “take jobs from Caucasians”.

At that point, I confronted him about his racism/nationalism/classism, pointing out how he was scapegoating impoverished people who simply need work to survive while the corporate profiteers are really to blame for global poverty. He got a “how dare you challenge me!” attitude, rolled his eyes when I used the term “corporate profiteers” and denied his racism.

Later, when the guy started in again about how the immigrants were, according to him, hurting American citizens, I told the guy that I found it really hard to believe that his name was the same as this one group member who wasn’t present and he got indignant and pulled out his ID and gave it to me. I handed it back and said, “This documentation doesn’t prove anything! Why should I trust this? This could be fake; I have no evidence otherwise!” The unknown adult white male was indignant again (or still) and said something about how he had no problem with showing his ID to any Border Patrol or police officer and I confronted him again with the fact that the 4th Amendment to the Constitution that he brought up earlier is supposed to keep us free from unreasonable search and seizure and that we, under the constitution, have the right to refrain from showing our identification to any “law enforcement” agent, even when asked or ordered to show it. I told him that it appeared to me that, not only was he opposed to our point of unity supporting immigrant workers and their families, he also went against us by supporting the police-state.

The troll said something about bringing his “Hispanic”, “Border Patrol” “wife” to the next meeting, claiming that maybe she would tell us some things to “open [our] minds”. I rolled MY eyes at that nonsense and shortly afterward the guy retracted the idea of bringing his wife, stating that he “[didn't] know if she could take the heat”. One other Stop the Checkpoints member said something to him like “oh, we’re not so mean” and he looked appreciatively at her and I raised my (left) hand and said “I am! I will take the credit!” then I turned my hand into a power-to-the-people fist and pumped it in the air twice. (Spontaneous drama by TAS chillin’)